October 20
Ka-pow! Brrraaaaaaaaaaattt! Pow! Pow!
The day after seventeen lions were killed in Zanesville, Ohio, the "Lion
of the Desert," Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, the dictator of Libya, was killed
by rebel gunfire in his hometown of Sirte. It was not a good time to be a
cat. Four Gamesters listed Qaddafi, the brutal leader of Libya from 1969 to
present, and brought home a four-point hit.
Seattle's legendary Mr. Goodvibes led this foursome of hitters as they
wandered through the smoke and bedlam. The hit took Mr. Goodvibes up eleven
spots to 28th-place with a 33 & 9 mark. But more significantly, it took Mr.
G to 700 career points - he is just the 12th Gamester in the history of
the world to reach that level.
Following close-by was second-year Gamester Busby Stoop, who improved to
30 & 6, almost double his rookie season score. Fourteen-year veteran
Decomposers climbed fifteen places on the big board as he reached 15 & 4.
Bringing up the rear was the Peach State's delicate Mr. Brink, who climbed ten
spots after improving to 6 & 3.
Video link:
Gruesome final minutes (discretion advised)
_http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWZnoTGjjkw&skipcontrinter=1_
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWZnoTGjjkw&skipcontrinter=1)
Weird Qaddafi speech with dancing girls
_http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBY-0n4esNY_ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBY-0n4esNY)
Editor's Note: A look at Qaddafi spellings is below the obit.
The Obituary (New York Times)
By _NEIL MacFARQUHAR_
(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/neil_macfarquhar/index.html?inline=nyt-per)
Published: October 20, 2011
Col. _Muammar el-Qaddafi_
(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/q/muammar_el_qaddafi/index.html?inline=nyt-per) , the erratic,
provocative dictator who ruled _Libya_
(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/libya/index.html?inline=nyt-geo) for 42
years, crushing opponents at home while cultivating the wardrobe and looks
befitting an aging rock star, met a violent and vengeful death on Thursday
in the hands of the Libyan forces that drove him from power.
Multimedia
_Slide Show _
(http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2011/10/20/world/africa/20111021_QADDAFI.html?ref=africa)
_Muammar el-Qaddafi: 42 Years as the Face of Libya_
(http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2011/10/20/world/africa/20111021_QADDAFI.html?ref=africa)
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_Timeline: Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi_
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Moises Saman for The New York Times
In March, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi presided over the General People's
Congress in Tripoli. _More Photos »_
(http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2011/10/20/world/africa/20111021_QADDAFI.html)
In death, as in life, his circumstances proved startling, with jerky video
images showing him captured, bloody and disheveled, but alive. A separate
clip showed his half-naked torso, with eyes staring vacantly and what
appeared to be a gunshot wound to the head, as jubilant fighters fired into the
air. In a third video, posted on _YouTube,_
(http://youtu.be/KEPnIKI3Ivg?t=41s) excited fighters hovered around his lifeless-looking body, posing for
photographs and yanking his limp head up and down by the hair.
Throughout his rule, Colonel Qaddafi, 69, sanctioned spasms of grisly
violence and frequent bedlam, even as he sought to leverage his nation’s oil
wealth into an outsize role on the world stage.
He embraced a string of titles: “the brother leader,” “the guide to the
era of the masses,” “the king of kings of Africa” and — his most preferred —
“the leader of the revolution.”
But the labels pinned on him by others tended to stick the most. President
Ronald Reagan called him “the mad dog of the Middle East.” President Anwar
el-Sadat of neighboring Egypt pronounced him “the crazy Libyan.”
As his dominion over Libya crumbled with surprising speed, Colonel Qaddafi
refused to countenance the fact that most Libyans despised him. He placed
blame for the uprising on foreign intervention — a United Nations Security
Council resolution intended to defend civilians became the contentious basis
for NATO airstrikes on his troops.
“I tell the coward crusaders: I live in a place where you can’t get me,”
he taunted defiantly after the uprising against his rule started in
February. “I live in the hearts of millions.”
That attitude endured to the end. In one of his last speeches, made weeks
after Tripoli fell and he was a fugitive, he exhorted Libyans to defeat the
uprising.
“The people of Libya, the true Libyans, will never accept invasion and
colonization,” he said in remarks broadcast by a Syrian television station
because he had lost control of Libya’s airwaves. “We will fight for our
freedom, and we are ready to sacrifice ourselves.”
Colonel Qaddafi was a 27-year-old junior officer when he led the bloodless
coup that deposed Libya’s monarch in 1969. Soon afterward, he began styling
himself a desert nomad philosopher. He received dignitaries in his
signature sprawling white tent, which he erected wherever he went: Rome, Paris
and, after much controversy, New York, on a Westchester estate in 2009.
Inside, its quilted walls might be printed with motifs like palm trees and
camels, or embroidered with his sayings.
Colonel Qaddafi declared that his political system of permanent revolution
would sweep away capitalism and socialism. But he hedged his bets by
financing and arming a cornucopia of violent organizations, including the Irish
Republican Army and African guerrilla groups, and he became an international
pariah after his government was linked to terrorist attacks, particularly
the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270
people.
After the American-led invasion of Iraq, Colonel Qaddafi announced that
Libya was abandoning its pursuit of unconventional weapons, including a covert
nascent nuclear program, ushering in a new era of relations with the West.
But in Libya, he ruled through an ever smaller circle of advisers,
including his sons, destroying any institution that might challenge him.
By the time he was done, Libya had no parliament, no unified military
command, no political parties, no unions, no civil society and no
nongovernmental organizations. His ministries were hollow, with the notable exception of
the state oil company.
A Tight Grip on Power
Eight years into his rule, he renamed the country the Great Socialist
People’s Libyan Jamahiriya. (Jamahiriya was his Arabic translation for a state
of the masses.) “In the era of the masses, power is in the hands of the
people themselves and leaders disappear forever,” he wrote in The Green Book, a
three-volume political tract that was required reading in every school.
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(http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/21/world/africa/qaddafi-killed-as-hometown-falls-to-libyan-rebels.html?pagewanted=2&hpw)
* _3_
(http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/21/world/africa/qaddafi-killed-as-hometown-falls-to-libyan-rebels.html?pagewanted=3&hpw)
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(http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/21/world/africa/qaddafi-killed-as-hometown-falls-to-libyan-rebels.html?pagewanted=4&hpw)
* _5_
(http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/21/world/africa/qaddafi-killed-as-hometown-falls-to-libyan-rebels.html?pagewanted=5&hpw)
* _6_
(http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/21/world/africa/qaddafi-killed-as-hometown-falls-to-libyan-rebels.html?pagewanted=6&hpw)
_Next Page »_
(http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/21/world/africa/qaddafi-killed-as-hometown-falls-to-libyan-rebels.html?pagewanted=2&hpw)
The Spelling of a Dictator
(Thanks go to Manolete for providing what is below. The source is The
Straight Dope.)
June 20, 1986
Dear Cecil:
Does anyone know how to spell the "mad dog's" name? Time spells it Muammar
Gaddafi, the TV stations spell it Moammar Khaddafi, and my roommate tells
me she's seen it spelled Qaddafi. Now all of a sudden there's a rush to
start spelling it Gadhafi. What's the deal?
— S. Johnsen, Chicago
Cecil replies:
Lord knows I hate to be critical, but the proliferation of spellings for
the name of Libya's head dude has been one of the continuing scandals of
American journalism. I mean, come on, we're trying to plumb this guy's psychic
depths and we can't even get his name straight? Sometimes I shudder for
the future of my country.
I count at least 12 different ways to spell the colonel's handle,
including Qaddhafi (New York Review of Books), Qaddafi (New Republic), Gaddafi
(Time), Kaddafi (Newsweek), Khadafy (Maclean's), Qadhafi (U.S. News & World
Report), Qadaffi (Business Week), and Gadaffi (World Press Review). Libya's UN
mission, in an effort to spread further confusion, spells the name
Qathafi, and I know I've seen Gadaafi somewhere. To make matters worse, the
Library of Congress and the Middle East Studies Association, to whom one would
ordinarily look for guidance, have a fondness for Qadhdhafi, which is an
abomination unto God. I think you now begin to grasp the dimensions of the
problem.
Some publications have used several spellings over the years;
unfortunately, the result has not been a stylistic convergence, but rather a
prolongation of the dismal status quo. In 1973 Business Week started out with Qadafi,
which had the advantage of simplicity, at least; unfortunately, almost no
one else used it, and BW sheepishly changed to Qadaffi. As of December 30,
1985, the usually punctilious New Yorker was spelling it Khadafy; by
January 20, 1986, this had inexplicably morphed into Qaddafi. The Wall Street
Journal initially used Qaddhafi, but now has shifted to Qadhafi. My personal
feeling is to chuck all the preceding and just call him Poohead, which is
easier to remember and has an undeniable evocative power as well. But to each
his own.
Things are only slightly less muddled with Mr. K's (or Mr. Q's or Mr. G's,
as you prefer) first name. Biz Week originally had it as Muammer, and the
New Yorker used to say Moammar, but now both have changed to Muammar. For a
while, in fact, it seemed that Muammar (sometimes written Mu'ammar, but
let's not get picky) might become the standard — until the Desert Fox himself
threw a monkey wrench into things, as he is wont to do. But more on this
anon.
The basic problem here is that (1) there is no generally accepted
authority for romanizing Arabic names, and (2) the Mummer's name contains several
sounds that have no exact equivalent in English. In standard Arabic, the
initial consonant qaf is pronounced like a throaty k, midway between the
English k and the German ch, as in Bach. The second consonant, dhal — two dhals,
actually — is pronounced like a double dh, which is similar to English th,
only with the tongue pulled back a bit behind the teeth. Regional
pronunciation differences further complicate matters. Libyans tend to pronounce qaf
like a hard g, which has inspired a whole different set of spellings.
In most cases where there is doubt about how to spell somebody's name, the
usual journalistic practice is to accept the preference of the namee. For
many years, however, the Mummer was too busy promoting global chaos to
devote much time to the niceties of orthography. That changed in May, 1986, when
he responded to a letter from some second-graders at Maxfield Magnet
School in St. Paul, Minnesota. The colonel signed the letter in Arabic script,
beneath which was typed "Moammar El-Gadhafi." This was the first known
indication of his own feelings on the subject, and the wire services and many
newspapers promptly announced they would switch. But Time and the New York
Times remain holdouts — which is typical, if you ask me. Someday, I swear, we
gotta get organized.
